Top level menus in Inkscape: File, Edit, View, Layer, Object, Path, Text, Effects, Help.

Top level menus in Adobe Illustrator 10: File, Edit, Object, Type, Select, Filter, Effect, View, Window, Help.

Text seems like nearly a better choice than Type (Illustrator came out of Adobes type business and Photoshop came later).

Might want to consider changing Effects to Effect which fits in better with the usual naming conventions of top level menus. I should have noticed it before, I will file a request for this minor tweak. The effects menu is already full of functionality and I would be tempted to put in submenus soon and provide struture for plugin developers to work to but I might be getting ahead of myself here.

(If I recally correctly the Filter menu is essentially the Photoshop filters embedded for use inside Illustrator.)

Inkscape doesn't currently have Select menu. Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, the GNU Image Manipulation program, Fireworks all have it. (There are probably some intersting counter examples of applications that dont have it but I'll leave that to someone else). I think in the long term a Select menu is a good idea but initially it may look a little odd with only 4 or 5 items so maybe I should rush to change it just yet.

The windows menu... There was a mailing list post earlier in the week which I read (with some difficulty). The message: Subject: Scribus+Inkscape UI discussion http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/10967 The article on the scribus user interface: http://www.le-radar.com/?articles/scribusUI

I mention it because the author thought it might be good to have a standard "Windows" menu. I've asked the GIMP developers to change their consider changing their Dialogs menu to a Windows menu (there is a little more to it than mere relabelling but not a whole lot). Getting rid of the dialogs menu forced a big User Interface shake up, reintroducing a very similar Windows menu to Inkscape might be counterproductive in the short term.

Those were the relatively easy things I've been pondering. The Object and Path menus are a little more difficult. I think they should probably be merged, Paths are essentially Objects. Some functionality such as "Inset" would be great if they worked on all objects, not just paths which is not a superficial change. Based on the Inset tool in Freehand a popup dialog with more flexible options might be appropriate. Some items will need to be moved submenus (probably the various Arrange and Transform options first) to allow this but it is more complicated than that.

So that is what I'm thinking so far and I realise some of it might not be immediately practical but with a bit more time I think out a bit more coherent of a plan. Hopefully developers can identify some parts of inkscape they think may need to be expanded or consilidated so there is room for the interface to grow without becoming overwhelming.

Too much caffeine, better go home and go for run if I'm ever going to get to sleep. (Which means I wont be responding to this message until tommorow.)

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/ Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/